Electric shockers

LIVING in an earthquake zone, you never know when the next one is going to strike. Californians are nervously waiting for the "Big One". And two years on, the Japanese are still reeling from the Kobe quake, which struck without warning, with devastating consequences. The trouble is that, unlike other natural disasters, earthquakes are almost impossible to predict. Different scientists have claimed to be able to pick up signs of an impending earthquake by monitoring changes in temperature, the composition of groundwater, radon concentrations or the level of the water table. Others have looked to more bizarre sources for clues: the behaviour of cockroaches, say, or the Renaissance writings of Nostradamus.

Lately another prediction technique has been causing uproar among earth scientists. Its supporters claim it works better than any of the methods that have been tried before. Its critics dismiss it as nonsense. But as the argument rages on, ...

To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.

To continue reading this article, log in or subscribe to New Scientist